Chapter 8
Eight
Women clutched the bars of their separate cells. Some clawed. Others wailed and spat and shrieked while tugging at thinning patches of scarecrow-ish hair as I walked through the Forensic Ward.
The guard rummaged through my bag of books, barely glancing at the titles.
“You can start your reading down at the end. Grab yourself a chair if ya need to. But if you rile them up, girl, ya ain’t coming back,” Officer Frank Holt warned, hardening his jaw.
The air in there felt different from inside the Geriatric Ward. Desperation, darkness, and terror wallpapered the concrete walls.
“I’m Cussy Lovett, your Book Woman,” I murmured to the women.
I stopped at the end in front of two locked cells and pulled out Pale Horse, Pale Rider, struggling to raise my voice above the loud agony and gloom crawling over the ward.
One prisoner was curled up on her cot, and the other, a young woman, held a ragged cloth doll and clung quietly to the bars, her wild hazel eyes drugged and protruding.
I read the first short story, and after I’d finished Noon Wine, the young girl said, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is my favorite.”
“It’s a grand book. Who is your favorite character?”
She grinned slyly. “Scarecrow.”
“Smart character for a smart young woman like you. I’m fond of Tin Man and his big heart. Maybe I can get you a copy.”
She blushed and then asked, “Can I have that book?”
Stepping closer to the bars, I held it up to her outstretched hand.
Suddenly, Officer Holt sliced a muscly arm through the air, breaking our hold. The book flopped to the floor with the slam of metal, skin, and bone. The tearful girl howled and lifted a limp hand, dangled a reddening finger gingerly holding her doll.
“Emmeline, back to your cot. You, Lovett”—he stabbed an angry finger in front of my face—“ya don’t give out anything in Forensics without permission first. Next time, I’ll throw your sorry blue ass in lockup for a gawdamn week.”
“You hurt Baby Mason. Mason, Mason,” she wailed and pressed the doll to the bars.
My mouth dried up as fear coated my tongue. Finally, I scraped out, “Yes—yes, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Then ask! She’s a gawdamn firebug,” the guard said, exasperated, danger flitting across his eyes.
“Done tried to kilt a bab—” He stopped abruptly, wiped a furious brow, not daring to say more.
Suddenly, his eyes showed a hint of regret, a sorrow, and I remembered he’d just lost another child. “Gawdamn crazy firebug!” he spat.
At this, Emmeline sobbed loudly, as if his accusation pained her more than the physical injury.
Officer Holt picked up the book and fanned through the pages several times before tossing it inside Emmeline’s cell. It bounced off her head. “Stop throwing a hissy, Emmeline, and get it ’fore I change my mind. Git.” He knocked his hard-toe shoe against the iron bars.
Whimpering, she rubbed her reddened forehead, then crept over to pick it up.
“You gonna read or waste time ogling into space?” The officer snapped his wrist toward the other women. “Back to work, Lovett.”
I moved to the next cell and pulled out a book. I stopped when a girl in braids, looking no older than twelve in a shapeless, soil-stained dress, softly recited the next lines of “Song of Myself.”
“I see you like Whitman. What’s your name?” I asked and thought of Honey.
She twirled a lock of hair over a dirt-stained finger, rocking her shoulders from side to side. “Odette,” she said.
“Fitting for a princess.”
Odette beamed. “Mama saw Swan Lake in the city when she was a young girl and never forgot. Promised she was gonna take me one day.”
After inspecting, Officer Holt granted me permission to pass the leather-bound volume of Leaves of Grass. “I can bring you more poetry books if you like, Odette,” I told her.
She squealed. “Oh, yes, Book Woman, I would love that.” Then her eyes took on a strange distance, rolling back into her head, and she fell onto her cot, jerking.
“Officer,” I called out.
“Move along, Lovett.” The guard shoved me over to another cell and let himself inside Odette’s.
I straightened, smoothed back my hair.
A tall older woman stood from her cot and walked over to the bars as I held up a copy of Hunter’s Horn by the Kentucky author Harriette Simpson Arnow.
“I remember that book. My auntie had a copy. And my pa was a foxhunter and farmer like Nunn Ballew.” She pointed to the cover, her eyes glassy from the prison drugs.
“Raised himself some fine hounds. We lived in Horse Hollow, not too far from Mrs. Arnow. Auntie traveled to Cincinnati and got her autograph one time.” She lifted a lopsided grin, approving of my selection.
“One of my favorite authors.”
When I finished the first chapter, I peered over to Odette’s cell, puzzled, hoping the girl was okay.
The guard had settled back into a chair behind his small wooden desk, reading a newspaper, seemingly indifferent to the girl’s strange behavior.
I recalled granny woman Emma McCain back home, treating one of the children on my book route with ginseng once when they had such a fit.
I studied her a bit more until Officer Holt shot me a disapproving look, moving me on.
When I’d look back at the guard each time to seek permission to leave a book and move on to the next prisoners, he’d stodgily nod. But I could also catch something more—a tiny wonderment and curiosity sweeping across his eyes as his rigid stance grew a bit more relaxed.
The lost women had calmed somewhat. Come home for a moment, even if briefly.
I dared to chance another peek at the guard and then back to the women, studying each hollowed face. The ghostly shells of robbed lives.
For the first time since I arrived, a deafening quiet carpeted the row of cells.
Officer Holt followed my gaze. He turned his surprised eyes back to me, feeling it too.
The tumultuous ward had shivered into a quavering charge and surrendered itself to a peaceful stillness for the printed word.
And I know’d somehow the books would heal these women.
Me.
All of us.